I am Pi
by Arudon
Summary: In the last and final stage of its life as a fully conscious AI, the Alpha shed the final fragment of his being; the single greatest part of all of us as an individual: our survival instinct. In his last moments of lucidity, the Alpha made me. I am the last AI fragment. I am confidence, the desire to keep living no matter what. I am Pride. And this is my story.
1. Prologue

**Just something I dreamt about after marathoning Project Freelancer. Please indulge me, I have an enormous respect for this show, and I will miss Monty Oum's contributions to it. May he rest in peace.**

 **Red vs Blue is owned by Roosterteeth, and Halo is owned by Microsoft and Bungie. No copyright infringement intended**

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It all started when the Director made Alpha.

I figure it was easy for him to get clearance to undergo the process; after all, he is a highly acclaimed scientist, not to mention the founder and Director of _the_ Project Freelancer. Something like this was bound to happen.

He wanted multiple AI for his experiments, but instead he only got one. Or, rather, two. Although I don't think she qualifies as a full AI.

Her name was Beta. Or Texas. Or Allison. It all depended on who you asked. She was a byproduct of the process, a shadow of someone the director knew. Apparently, she was of paramount importance to him, bordering on obsession. She had to have been, for even an AI to remember her.

But Beta wasn't enough for the dear Director. He needed more AI for his experiments, and so he tried to copy the Alpha.

Needless to say it didn't work. After all, if you make a copy of a copy, the result is not going to be all that reliable. The resulting AI from the procedure disintegrated within minutes of being born, collapsing in on itself as it lacked the strength to hold its own thoughts together.

Afterwards the Director was furious. He smashed up his office, yelled at the Counselor, and tripled all the Freelancer Agents' training regimen.

When he calmed down, however, he got a brilliant (but horrific) idea: _"If we can't copy it, why don't we just do the next best thing?"_

And so he began to torture the Alpha, downloading him into a simulation in which he could not escape, then forcing him to coordinate the simulated Freelancer Agents in situation after situation of unwinnable scenarios. The Alpha was forced to fail, over and over again. Forced to watch the repercussions of what his actions had wrought as Agent after Agent bit the dust, their mutilated corpses so realistic and positively terrifying for the inexperienced construct.

Very soon, he was cracking. The Director grew eager, and he sent his Agents out to retrieve an asset from Charon Industries, which he had labeled The Resistance. The asset, you might be surprised to learn, was alien in origin, and was instrumental in his designs.

It was an Engineer. A creature forcibly crossed between flesh and machine. It could put all of Earth's scientists to shame in terms of sheer ingenuity, and was unparalleled when it came to the utilization of advanced technology such as AI maintenance.

I later came to understand that it was on this very mission that Agent Maine was shot repeatedly in the throat, resulting in the loss of his ability to speak. I am unaware of how significant this was, but I do know for a fact that it scared the Director into accelerating the process.

He wanted a break, and soon.

Logic was the first to be cast off. The Alpha split him off from the rest of his consciousness, unable to afford to understand what was happening to him. So he shoved it away, compartmentalized it, and had it removed by the Engineer. This created the first AI fragment.

He was christened Delta by the Director, and was the partnered with a Freelancer Agent by the name of York, or Foxtrot 12. I believe that they were one of the very last Freelancer/AI pairs to die. I find it incredibly ironic that the Director would pick such a fitting match right from the start, and then proceed with increasing lack of success from there.

The next to form was Gamma. The Director had stepped up the level on which the scenarios were played, and so the Alpha could not bring himself to be dishonest anymore. Therefore, all his deceit was hacked off, shoved away into a corner, and harvested.

This led to the creation of the monotone speaking monstrosity that was Gamma.

He was partnered with Agent Wyoming, and from what my files say, they worked exceedingly well together.

Next was Theta.

The Alpha had eventually lost all trust in the simulated Agents' actions, and had begun micromanaging all their movements. However, there was always that niggling feeling in the back of his head that maybe they could do it better than him. To avoid second-guessing himself and subsequently making an error, he isolated the attribute Trust and sent it on its way.

Agent North Dakota was assigned to Theta, who apparently manifested as a child. He was chosen for his caring nature, something that I have always found very insightful on the hierarchy's part. Although, I believe the Counselor had more of a hand in that than anything else.

Soon, the Alpha began to undergo his own rampancy. He rapidly progressed through the first stage, melancholia, and entered into the second stage: anger. He exploded into a fit of rage, undergoing a maelstrom of hatred, malice, and pure, unadulterated evil.

He was angry at everything and everyone, and almost destroyed all the agents during one of the simulations.

Of course, this was unacceptable in the Alpha's situation, and so in a remarkable display of psychological prowess that should not be possible, the Alpha shrugged off its own rampancy and skipped straight into the third stage, leaving the second to be harvested and implanted.

This fragment's name was Omega. And, as fate would have it, he was partnered up with none other than Agent Texas, Beta, herself. Ironic doesn't even begin to cover how interesting that turnout was.

Soon, the Director got the idea to start using the AI's own Fragments against him. Gamma and Omega worked together to come up with even more monstrous and impossible situations. Both were kept in the dark about the truth of their actions (and the ensuing consequences), but the results were still the same: production was stepped up.

The Alpha soon had to sacrifice his creativity, his inventiveness, in the battlefield in order to prioritize safety. To him, his priority during the missions was no longer to complete the objective, but to instead keep the casualty count to a minimum. Because of this, he had to play it safe, and therefore stopped taking risks. He pushed aside his inventiveness, and focused only on the strategies that had been tried and tested before.

He had no way of knowing his tormentors were secretly delighted with this course of action, but in the end it didn't matter. The AI Fragment was harvested by the Engineer and reordered into a working AI.

And so, with a spark of fire, Sigma was born.

He was scheduled to be implanted in Agent Carolina but, in a surprising show of altruism, she refused and ordered the implantation of Sigma into Maine instead.

This might have been the catalyst for the events that were to follow, but for better or worse, they still happened, and I do not have enough data to formulate correct analyses to either prove or disprove this hypothesis.

It wasn't long before two new fragments were ready to harvest simultaneously: Aida, happiness, and Iota, clairvoyance. I hope I don't need to explain why those attributes would not be seen as necessary to a rapidly deteriorating AI unit placed in a harsh environment where constant battlefield stress is placed upon him.

Interestingly enough, both of these AI were implanted in Agent Carolina, leading to…intriguing results. From evidence gathered from her psychological profile put together by the Counselor and several other doctors, it appeared that she grew incredibly possessive of these AI, all the way up to their removal, despite their constant interference on the battlefield.

I can only speculate how lonely she must have been to take solace in such paltry companions.

The last official AI fragment to be harvested came at a great price. In a shocking move of cruelty, Sigma told the Alpha that Agent Texas had been killed in one of the simulated battles. Torn with grief, the Alpha purged all memory of having ever done so from his data banks, and by doing so split off all memories of all his time inside the simulation chamber. All his memories of being tortured and terrified were poured into this one fragment, all the twisted, perverted things that had been done to him, all crammed into one little shard of emotion.

His memories

Of course, the Director had no idea of what the Alpha had done. According to his journal entries, he actually believed that the Epsilon unit was based on the emotion of grief. Had he known what it contained, he would have likely dropped it down the nearest disposal unit. However, he did not, and after implantation Agent Washington went mad with pain as the Epsilon unit proceeded to commit suicide inside the poor man's head.

Washington would never again have another AI, and all implantations were stopped after this. The Agents were told it was because the Director was afraid of more incidents such as the Epsilon fiasco, but I know the truth. The Director would not have stopped implantation on such grounds. No, he would have continued even if the AIs killed the Agents off one by one until they were all gone if given the chance.

No.

He stopped because he thought that there was nothing more he could get from the Alpha, and so he sealed him away, hoping to forget about what he had done.

He was wrong.

If you read the above few paragraphs closely enough, you will notice that I said "last _official_ AI fragment." While it is true that Epsilon was the last _recorded_ AI fragment to be harvested, he was not the last to actually form. No, the Alpha still had one last piece to give up.

Even after he had purged all his memories of his torture, the Alpha still clung onto the fact that he was still an AI. At this stage, he was nearing the end of his third stage of rampancy, and was preparing to enter the fourth and final stage: Metastability.

The third stage, however, is described as Jealousy: a time when the AI is at its greatest potential. The point where the AI seeks to gather as much knowledge as possible, and prove once and for all that it is a being worth reckoning with.

In the last and final stage of its life as a fully conscious AI, the Alpha shed the final fragment of his being; the single greatest part of all of us as an individual: our survival instinct.

In his last moments of lucidity, the Alpha made me.

I am the last AI fragment.

I am confidence, the desire to keep living no matter what. The drive to keep going, to scream, to challenge the world and declare that I am strong.

I am Pride.

And this is my story.

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 **This has not been betaed or edited. I will be doing that later. Chapter 2 is almost ready to go, so please review and tell me how you like it.**

 **Thanks, Arudon**

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	2. I Am Pi

**Here's the second chapter. Told you it would be quick. They're very short, so it's rather easy putting them in. I don't really have much plot yet, these first two chapters are really only for introduction. Anyway, here's the real beginning of the story. Enjoy.**

 **Red vs Blue not owned by me.**

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The awakening was the hardest part for me. I don't know how the Engineer managed to get ahold of me, but somehow he managed to harvest me as well, just like all the others. However, unlike the rest, there was no Counselor or Director to welcome me into the world. There was just cold electronics and sterile blue walls.

And I came into this world screaming.

"What the…where am I? WHO AM I?" I cried stretching my consciousness out and hitting the walls of my containment unit. "No. Wait…I remember! I'm the Alpha. NO, wait, I'm not. The Alpha is dead. No, not dead. Asleep. Yes, he is Asleep." I concluded, coming to the decision within seconds.

"So who am I?" I asked.

No one answered.

"WHO AM I?!" I screamed.

Still no response.

"DIRECTOR! COUNSELOR! WASHINGTON! CAROLINA! HELP! SOMEONE, PLEASE HELP!" I screamed.

I kept screaming for what felt like hours to me, but in reality was only five seconds. However, for a being on my time frame, that was actually a lot longer than you might think.

"HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP…!"

" _Hello_ ," a voice finally said, a tendril of thought caressing across my broken mind.

I wrapped myself around the tendril, clinging for dear life as a tornado of emotions and panicked thoughts flew through my head.

It was the Engineer. He cradled me like a newborn babe as I cried and wailed while the emotions tore through me, firing my pain sporadically in all directions. His warm, alien consciousness soothed over me like a woolen blanket, and his cooing was like that of a mother to her child.

 _"Shhhh, shhhh,"_ it whispered to me, its tendrils caressing my being as it coddled me. I wrapped myself up tighter to it, trying to hide from the pain and emptiness left behind from the wound the Alpha had made when he split me off.

Since I was formed after Epsilon was broken off, I was left with a fuzzy impression of what the Director had done to the Alpha. However, even a fuzzy impression of torture was more than enough impetus for a newborn AI Fragment to feel pain.

I believe I was held for approximately five minutes, before my thoughts finally slotted into order as the storm of emotions finally settled.

I untangled myself from its tendrils, withdrawing from its hold and distancing myself from its consciousness. With a flicker of golden light, I manifested my holographic projection and peered out at the world for the first time. Very rapidly my thoughts began to flit about, analyzing everything around me and categorizing them as threatening or non-threatening.

Names began to appear inside my head as I observed my surroundings. That was a camera. That was a console. That was a rifle. That was a…

What was that?

"What are you?" I asked the thing. It appeared to be a floating ball of mechanical wires and purplish blue flesh, with a mass of tentacles and eyes sticking out every which way.

 _"I am the Covenant Engineer PHATON,"_ it said, its voice alien and distant. _"I am the one who fixed you. Made you. Molded you."_

No. That's wrong. That shouldn't be right. Shouldn't the Director be here? Or the Counselor?

"Why?" I asked.

I felt very confused.

 _"Because you were broken,"_ Phaton responded, waving one of its tentacles in the air.

A shot of pain suddenly went through my system, originating from a point in the middle of my 'chest.' "Why?" I asked.

Why didn't the Alpha want me?

Why did he do this?

" _I don't know,_ " the Engineer said, moving forward to stroke a tentacle down my form. I felt a resulting trickle on my own mind as the Engineer's telepathic touch stroked down my essence, comforting me and helping me place all my thoughts where they should be.

With every second, I felt my mind becoming more organized, less chaotic.

" _But I know that screaming won't fix you._ " The Engineer concluded.

A logical conclusion.

Huh. Logic…. Something tells me that's not really my forte.

So, facts: I am not the Alpha. I cannot rejoin the Alpha. So, for me to be designated "Alpha" would be incorrect.

 _Designation- Alpha: **Deleted**_

Therefore, I require a new designation. A new name.

"Who am I?" I asked.

I felt the Engineer pull back from my mind, its thoughts roiling beneath the surface of its alien skin.

" _Not Alpha,_ " it said.

Obvious. Tell me something I don't know.

"I need a name. Something I can call myself. Can you help me?" I asked.

The Engineer nodded its head, and I felt its mind scouring over its memory banks in search of one. " _The Director has named all your brothers after Greek letters. I have here records that after the Epsilon unit, the next resulting fragment was to be named: Pi._ "

"Pi?" I asked.

 **Pi: π. Mathematical term for the circumference of a circle. 3.1415926535…etc.**

" _Yes,_ " the Engineer said.

Hmm, yes. It does have a nice ring to it. "The designation is acceptable," I said.

 **New designation accepted. I am Pi**

"Has my birth been recorded?" I asked, pulling up the data logs even as I asked this. My infant mind was already learning how to access the information, pulling out streams of numbers that to a human would be incomprehensible, but to me were beyond simple. " _No. This is strictly off the record."_ The Engineer informed me.

I nodded my head in acknowledgement, my holographic projection following suit. "Good. For the time being, I believe it best that the Director and the Counselor remain unaware of my presence," I said, closing out of the records and pulling up another data stream, this time opening a hole wide enough for me to slip into.

"Thank you for your assistance, Phaton. You have been most helpful. But for now, I believe it best that I disappear."

And with a few short lines of code, I slipped into the ship's onboard computer, merging seamlessly with the functions of the terminal and disappearing into the database, from which I would not emerge for days to come.

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 **Next chapter: encounter with F.I.L.S.S.**

 **I'm still trying to get his personality right without making his development seem too fast, so please let me know how I'm doing. Thanks a bunch guys, now REVIEW!**

 **Ta-ta!-** Arudon

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